Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer ignores orders to remain in place and leads five forays into a ravine outside the village of Ganjigal, Afghanistan, after members of his column are ambushed by Taliban while attempting a meeting with the village elders. Meyer and Staff Sergeant Juan J. Rodriguez-Chavez, who are off to a flank and not inside the ambush, rush in and rescue several trapped American and Afghan soldiers after Captain Will Swenson of the US Army calls for artillery support and the request is denied. Meyer, Rodriguez-Chavez, Swenson, and others also retrieve the remains of three fallen Marines and one Navy corpsman. [New York Times, 9/15/2011] Meyer will later be given the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions (see September 15, 2011) [New York Times, 9/15/2011] and Rodriguez-Chavez will receive the Navy Cross. [CNN, 6/10/2011]Limits and Dangers of Counterinsurgency Theory - The event will later be examined and used as an example of the problems that can occur with the counterinsurgency theory that has been pressed upon the troops by the Pentagon. The villagers’ betrayal to the Taliban, ambiguous lines of command, and refusal of help from nearby units will all been documented as the kinds of problems that enlisted soldiers typically face in Afghanistan. [New York Times, 9/15/2011]

Dakota Meyer, an inactive reserve Marine sergeant (see May 2010), goes to work for AUSGAR Technologies in June 2010 and stays there until March 2011, at which time he goes to work for BAE Systems OASYS, LLC (see March 2011). His work at AUSGAR largely consists of training troops to locate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) with thermal imaging and optical equipment, tools that are most often used by snipers. [District Court of Bexar County, TX, 11/28/2011; Wall Street Journal, 11/29/2011]

President Obama presents Marine Sergeant Dakota Meyer with the Medal of Honor. [Source: Reuters]President Obama presents Sergeant Dakota Meyer with the Congressional Medal of Honor for actions in combat against Pakistani insurgents (in some media accounts they are labelled simply as “Taliban”) in Ganjigal, Afghanistan (see September 8, 2009 and November 8, 2010). [New York Times, 9/15/2011]

Court papers are filed in Medal of Honor recipient Sergeant Dakota Meyer’s (see September 15, 2011) defamation of character lawsuit in the district court of Bexar County (San Antonio), Texas (see After June 1, 2011). The suit is against Meyer’s former employer BAE Systems (a British-owned defense contractor that has contracts with the US government) and supervisor Bobbie McCreight. Meyer’s legal team writes in the court documents that the defamation came after Meyer expressed concern over BAE’s intent to sell PAS-13s (advanced optic scopes) to Pakistan (see April 2011 and April 29, 2011). The court filing also alleges that BAE prevented his hiring by another defense contractor, AUSGAR Technologies (see Before May 31, 2011 and May 31, 2011), by telling Pentagon program manager Robert Higginson on the phone that Meyer was mentally unstable and had a drinking problem. The phone conversation is said to have occurred at some point in the last 10 days of May 2011, according to the filing. [District Court of Bexar County, TX, 11/28/2011; BBC, 11/30/2011; Agence France-Presse, 11/30/2011; Washington Business Journal, 11/30/2011]

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